A writing day today. After several hours on an article, I turned to finishing a review for a journal of the interesting book, Dispatches from Continent Seven: An Anthology of Antarctic Science. It's a compendium of accounts of scientific life and work in Antarctica from the late 1700s to the present day. Some nice examples of science writing for a general audience, conveying a sense of what it's like to be a scientist in a remarkable place.
Across the decades, there's a change in tone. A century ago, it was incredible hardship and danger, as explorers and scientists trekked on foot across the ice, usually surviving, but sometimes not. Among the accounts are excerpts from Robert Falcon Scott's diary of his last expedition in 1912, as well as an excruciating narrative of The Worst Journey in the World.
But in the last few decades, the tone becomes lighter -- even a bit jocular at times. Scientists equipped with helicopters and other machines are saved from staggering arduously across the ice; they communicate daily with home base, and enjoy hot meals and showers and occasional binges of watching 24. They are free to look at and enjoy -- with a sense of awe -- the scenery.
So it was striking to read today about the death of a scientist in Antarctica, fallen in a crevasse as he studied ice and climate change. A sad reminder that every scientific field site, especially in the polar regions, still carries dangers.
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